Poetry: Susan Gevirtz

HOUSE, excerpt

We lay on our hands
As they pass under
   we are an arbor
And their curved backs our
bread rising






We are the ones who tend
    the other bodied ones
 marsupial and nailed
wearing shoes















Rest













Stocking up supplies, stories and docile be







Eat, the unconflicted                                          domicile















     blood of the plant
            bulls eye
midnight inventory












chameleon of forms



beckon of forms















tinker boat
toy house
box turtle sunk in the tub
pig heart in a nutshell













midnight survey
track and count milk lunch















Come crouch around her radiance



oranges, cunts, seaweed and
           sweet briar, cockles and a floor
       of pastry crust (sawdust)

 the house made ready for a ball















She wraps her lengthening vines
A skidding augury of arms















1st  2nd   3rd degree burns
of the distant children















That’s the house, sentimental as brick
hard as snowmelt, bright as a gas flame



He enters again    breaks or putties
         the surface    calls everything he
touches Hope and then hope itself has to reach for itself

Again, the house, so like the
seafloor
and the custody of the body
             by the body of the house















mind of rotted bone or coral or styrofoam




task on the long prairie between



holiday malady

crumb by crumb

on their behalf

What falls, flies, hastens?

swells the ribcage

 of my heart

Swollen gland
by oil of jasmine
to cast out strep















Everything else is junk mail

Anything that thinks it escapes

drinks anti-freeze









while here under the stucco and

lath roof constellations spill

we harvest

to splash on fever















All the while the

anchor of somnolence



drags the house

below sea level
in broad daylight




Send them

to the wolverine den

gravel pit



When they return the fanged slip in too



road rash on the house















So delegate –eye of newt in the thermos

So wake up –

Endure example they’ll mimic

tedious appearance the shell

of the procedural versus the shattering of the shell



uninvited inhabitants dwell in ownership



so calm
calendric passages

presto logs
         candlesticks carried from Lithuania or the lower east side












Always the cheerful pillage



sundering the rudder










Knock in the middle of the middle of the night



pumice to bottom of bone
dead reckoning minus thinking












dogs guarding the borders
the boundary waters and
boiling water guarding the borders

---

Susan Gevirtz’s recent books include AERODROME ORION & Starry Messenger, Kelsey St., 2010; and Coming Events (Collected Writings), Nightboat, 2013.
Some recent favorites:
“The mind begins early to select from the buzz and humdrum, till most men end hearing nothing, when the earth speaks, but their own voices.” –Ronald Johnson, ARK,
“When does the past begin?” –Norma Cole, WIN THESE POSTERS AND OTHER UNRELATED PRIZES INSIDE